


Rose Red (Outtake)

by esme_green



Series: Rose Red [2]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Outtakes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-03
Updated: 2011-01-03
Packaged: 2017-11-28 18:07:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/677313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/esme_green/pseuds/esme_green
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Outtake from <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/677296">Rose Red</a> written from McCoy's POV. I couldn't bring myself to delete even though it didn't end up working with the story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rose Red (Outtake)

There was no reason on Earth why Jim Kirk needed to know how much McCoy enjoyed being surrounded by teenaged girls.

"We need to get you a girl, Bones."

Apparently, Jim had allotted these ten minutes in his crammed schedule to badger McCoy into going out that night.

McCoy focused on his lunch. "I'm too old to go prowling Academy bars, kid."

"Granted, I'm not going to be able to dig up another hot Olympic gymnast for you—"

"Emony and I are old friends. Have been for years." And he missed her, but probably not in a way Jim would understand. He scowled. "You're too young to have old friends."

"Granted, hot women who happen to be two hundred years old, like you are," Jim paused for emphasis, "are thin on the ground. But there has to be an alternative."

"Unlike you, I don't need every moment of my life to be—"

"Maybe someone with a daddy kink?" Jim grinned.

"Go to hell."

"You're a doctor! You must see all kinds streaming through the clinic. Surely someone—"

"I see patients, not potential dates." McCoy forked up another bite of food and tried not to hunch over his plate.

"Then we have to look farther afield." Jim cast his eye over the Academy green, where dozens of students were lounging, making the most of the California sun. "Huh."

McCoy glanced up long enough to see the gleam in Jim's eye turn speculative.

"Blonde. Laughing. Eight o'clock, thirty metres."

Just because he wasn't buying what Jim Kirk was selling didn't mean he wouldn't look. The kid did have an eye.

A very good eye. Long, tall, blonde. Pale skin. Angled away from him, so he couldn't see her face, but he could hear a carefree laugh that was more a joyful, girlish giggle.

What had possessed him to come and live with all these bright young things for three years, he had no idea. He felt older every day.

"How about her, Bones? I happen to know she has standards."

McCoy turned back to his food. "You mean she turned you down."

Jim grinned. "Not me specifically. What she actually said no to was—"

"I don't want to—" McCoy held up a hand to stop Jim talking, which Jim ignored.

"—a threesome with me and this Orion girl, Gaila, from the Engineering stream—"

"So she's not depraved?" McCoy said dryly.

"Come on, Bones! Me *and* an Orion, together? That's like the…the apotheosis of—"

"Oh god—"

"—sexual experience. And believe me, she could use some cheering up."

McCoy took a second surreptitious glance at the laughing blonde. "Is she in Medical?"

"A nurse."

"Yes." The pieces began to fall together. "I've seen her. But she doesn't usually smile at work."

Jim's grin widened, if that was possible. "Maybe you could make her."

McCoy rolled his eyes and turned back to his lunch. "Some people are serious about their studies. And clearly she doesn't need the help." Definitely not, he thought, replaying the image of her long bare legs as she lolled in the grass and laughed with her friends.

Damned cradle robber.

******

Unfortunately, the alchemy of Jim's suggestion and Emony's—well, everything, really; she was a woman who knew how to give a wounded man back his confidence, in so many more ways than sexually—worked on McCoy in inconvenient ways.

He started to notice the blonde. Chapel was her name. A few moments with her public file told him she'd started nursing studies at sixteen and her biochemistry doctorate two years later.

And she was always scowling at something whenever he saw her.

Granted, he was usually scowling too, between the bureaucracy of Starfleet Medical, the hierarchy of the Academy clinic, and the idiocy of so many young cadets who scored way past "genius" on the intelligence scale but who couldn't keep themselves from getting injured in stupid ways.

But really, a kid like her shouldn't be in the same bad mood as him, even if she had logged an impressive number of clinic hours in the past four years.

He found himself keeping an eye on her. She had enough practical experience and that one attribute Starfleet couldn't train—common sense—that he admired her accomplishments.

When he started requesting her as his surgical nurse, it was an avuncular interest, of course. And she was very good, smart and sharp and soon able to anticipate his needs. Perhaps a little tense, he noted, on the inevitable occasions where their hands or shoulders brushed during a procedure. But always focused and alert, and he'd take that any day.

He wanted to know more about her. Her aspirations, her career plans. Perhaps mentor her if she wanted to make the move to medical doctor next. See her smile, or at least not frown at him.

Oh, for god's sake.

**Author's Note:**

> Full story [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/677296).


End file.
